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Treyflix

Building A PC, What Mobo, case, display, and RAM to get?

9 posts in this topic

MAJOR EDIT:

I now have two builds depending on my budget. One has a GPU, and one has an APU. there is a $100 difference between the two. Obviously I'd prefer build 1!

Build 1: http://pcpartpicker.com/p/H0WH

Specs:

CPU: 6 cores @ 2.7 GHz

GPU: Radeon 7770 GHz

RAM: 8GB (with 16GB space total for when I have more money)

Storage: 500GB 7200RPM HDD

PSU: 400W

Price: $600.88 Before rebates after shipping

Build 2: http://pcpartpicker.com/p/GTGw

Specs:

CPU 4 cores @ 3.6GHz

GPU: 7660D (would get dedicated GPU later)

RAM: 8GB (32GB of slots total)

Storage: 500GB 7200RPM HDD

PSU:400W

Price: $509 Before rebates after shipping

Any critisism or advice is appreciated.

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I can help you if you want, I build PC's all the time.. I just finished two!

You are correct in the OS department, unless you go Linux (I <3 Linux!) but you probably do not want to do that.. (Minecraft works, but most games don't.)

The rest.. well theres a lot of things to figure out still in your build. Since your trying to go very budget pc, I'd recommend a case with a PSU built in, should be able to find a $30 case with maybe 400W ish PSU probably work ok.. more power is better if you can get away with it..

I'd say PM me, or try to catch me in IRC.. #TFCRoanoke on Esper.net; I'm one of the admins there.

Good luck with your build!

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I can help you if you want, I build PC's all the time.. I just finished two!

You are correct in the OS department, unless you go Linux (I <3 Linux!) but you probably do not want to do that.. (Minecraft works, but most games don't.)

The rest.. well theres a lot of things to figure out still in your build. Since your trying to go very budget pc, I'd recommend a case with a PSU built in, should be able to find a $30 case with maybe 400W ish PSU probably work ok.. more power is better if you can get away with it..

I'd say PM me, or try to catch me in IRC.. #TFCRoanoke on Esper.net; I'm one of the admins there.

Good luck with your build!

Thanks man! I just completed an initial build (see edit), now I know what I want we can talk more specifics. A few questions:

1: How the fuck do I pick a case? I just went and picked the cheapest ($50) case with the best reviews...

2: is it worth looking at refurbished Monitors?

3: I saw somewhere that you need a mother board with PCei 3.0 or something for the GPU I want but I can't figure out if the mother board I selected (ASRock 770iCafe ATX AM3) has this... where in the Specs is that?

4: how low of a PSU can I SAFELY get away with for this build? I picked a cheap 700W...

5: This free OS in Linux looks extremely attractive! I don't really play games other than Minecraft so that would not be a big deal. What more can you tell me about this?

and I'm sure I'll have more if you take a look at the build I came up with

.

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You can get 1TB of space with a Seagate barracuda, I've built a pc for a friend and then he went on to build a pc for his friends and both the builds used this hard drive. It works quite well.

I can help you if you want, I build PC's all the time.. I just finished two! You are correct in the OS department, unless you go Linux (I <3 Linux!) but you probably do not want to do that.. (Minecraft works, but most games don't.) The rest.. well theres a lot of things to figure out still in your build. Since your trying to go very budget pc, I'd recommend a case with a PSU built in, should be able to find a $30 case with maybe 400W ish PSU probably work ok.. more power is better if you can get away with it.. I'd say PM me, or try to catch me in IRC.. #TFCRoanoke on Esper.net; I'm one of the admins there. Good luck with your build!

I highly question your pc building "skills" you just told someone to buy a 30$ case which comes with a psu which is 400w, not only does that completely drive through the 1$ per 10 watts rule of thumb. You are also adding the cost of the case to that. You might as well tell him to use a cardboard box and connect some wires from the mains power sockets in the house straight to the motherboard.

Thanks man! I just completed an initial build (see edit), now I know what I want we can talk more specifics. A few questions: 1: How the fuck do I pick a case? I just went and picked the cheapest ($50) case with the best reviews... 2: is it worth looking at refurbished Monitors? 3: I saw somewhere that you need a mother board with PCei 3.0 or something for the GPU I want but I can't figure out if the mother board I selected (ASRock 770iCafe ATX AM3) has this... where in the Specs is that? 4: how low of a PSU can I SAFELY get away with for this build? I picked a cheap 700W... 5: This free OS in Linux looks extremely attractive! I don't really play games other than Minecraft so that would not be a big deal. What more can you tell me about this? and I'm sure I'll have more if you take a look at the build I came up with .

If you don't care about case looks, pick a case that has good reviews online. And don't look at the reviews on the sites selling it, look at reviews on forums that are meant for computer discussion. You are basically looking at a case that has at least standard ATX compatibility, unless you want to build a small form factor gaming pc. Then you can buy a mini/micro ATX motherboard and a case for it. There are even solutions out there which provide a case with an appropriate cooler and a power solution in built, made by popular companies. There is information on these on a youtube channel ran by NCIX (channel name: NCIXcom), a good company that sells and reviews a lot of PC hardware. They have lots of interesting and informational videos and practically all your questions here can be answered in their videos.

As long as the refurbished monitor is from a trusted site then there is nothing against it, but you need to be open to the fact that the thing will not be new and most likely will not look brand new. Once again, if you don't care about looks, go for it, if you do care about looks, you are better off buying a brand new monitor.

PCIe 3.0 is just a new technology implemented on the side of the graphics card, all the standards are backwards and forwards compatible with each other, this means that if the chipset used in your motherboard has support for PCIe 1.0 then you can have a 3.0 card and vice versa. Obviously if you have a graphics card that supports 3.0 and a motherboard that supports 3.0 you will get optimal performance but 2.0 is perfectly fine, especially for budget PCs.

Don't pick cheap high power PSUs unless you like paying twice for your parts when they all die bnecause the power supply has shitty over current protection. The PSU is arguably the MOST IMPORTANT decision in your build and should ideally be made afterwards. Use an online power calculator once you have a full list of parts. This will tell you the minimum amount of power your pc would need to run without problems. Round this value up to the nearest 50 watts, and find a power supply with this value. As a general rule of thumb, 10 watts should cost 1$. If you get any more watts per dollar than that (unless there is a money off offer) you should not trust buying that power supply. I can predict that your system will likely use about 400-500 watts because of the parts used. This means that you are aiming for a price range of about $40-50 plus around about $10 if the power supply is semi modular. Also, stick with good brands. Seasonic is a brand that practically manufactures a lot of the parts that almost every modern day good brand power supply uses. They are the company that keeps the quality PSU market going. Other good brands include: Antec, Corsair(In my current rig I am using a TX550M), XFX and cooler master.

Linux is difficult to get started with but once you know how to operate it, it can become an amazing every day tool. It's very open and there are many variations. If you don't want to spend $70 on an OEM version of windows 7 then get Linux. There are a lot of people out there on forums which can help you using it. One thing you need to know is that even though there are programs that allow you to run windows executables and do other useful things such as that, these don't always work, so you need to get used to having to solve problems.

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I decided to go with linux, a 400W antec PSU, and the A8 APU, :D way more affordable! I also changed to a better Mobo. thanks to the advice so far!

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I decided to go with linux, a 400W antec PSU, and the A8 APU, :D way more affordable! I also changed to a better Mobo. thanks to the advice so far!

Unless you are seriously not going to do any more gaming other than minecraft, an APU is the way to go. But remember, even though these APUs are 10 times better than intel integrated graphics, they are still not all that powerful. And since you went with the APU you don't need the graphics card, unless you want to do a hybrid crossfire setup (now called something different) where you set up a crossfire between the APU and the Graphics card. But then, its more affordable to just go with a processor that is equivalent in power to the APU and a better graphics card.

As a side note, If you are going with just the APU you might get away with just 300W.

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Unless you are seriously not going to do any more gaming other than minecraft, an APU is the way to go. But remember, even though these APUs are 10 times better than intel integrated graphics, they are still not all that powerful. And since you went with the APU you don't need the graphics card, unless you want to do a hybrid crossfire setup (now called something different) where you set up a crossfire between the APU and the Graphics card. But then, its more affordable to just go with a processor that is equivalent in power to the APU and a better graphics card.

As a side note, If you are going with just the APU you might get away with just 300W.

i was under the impression you could run a APU and a dedicated GPU together with no issues? See here is how this works.

This set up costs $510 (less if you count the rebates, but I don't really) that is literally how much money I can spend on this. HOWEVER, I know some one who might have a Monitor/keyboard/mouse I can have for free. If he does, then I just buy the computer and it only costs $405, so I buy a GTX 650 and bring the price back to $510.

TL;DR: I may or may not buy a graphics card right away but if I don't, I'll have the APU until I can fork out more cash.

Or will that not work?

Obviously I COULD go for a much cheaper CPU and get a Cheap GPU anyway, but I don't see a setup that is worth it, unless you have a suggestion?

And yes, as far as games I really do only play minecraft. I despise FPS's, get bored with racing games quick, and have never found another sandbox to rival MC.

Actually though, I I do have enough $$$ to get the GPU, I won't fuck around with the A8. I'll get the AMD FX-6100 for the same price (or 6300 for a tad more but even better performance) and two more cores at the same speed.

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i was under the impression you could run a APU and a dedicated GPU together with no issues? See here is how this works.

This set up costs $510 (less if you count the rebates, but I don't really) that is literally how much money I can spend on this. HOWEVER, I know some one who might have a Monitor/keyboard/mouse I can have for free. If he does, then I just buy the computer and it only costs $405, so I buy a GTX 650 and bring the price back to $510.

TL;DR: I may or may not buy a graphics card right away but if I don't, I'll have the APU until I can fork out more cash.

Or will that not work?

Obviously I COULD go for a much cheaper CPU and get a Cheap GPU anyway, but I don't see a setup that is worth it, unless you have a suggestion?

And yes, as far as games I really do only play minecraft. I despise FPS's, get bored with racing games quick, and have never found another sandbox to rival MC.

Actually though, I I do have enough $$$ to get the GPU, I won't fuck around with the A8. I'll get the AMD FX-6100 for the same price (or 6300 for a tad more but even better performance) and two more cores at the same speed.

Bulldozer wasn't the best release for gaming, you can over clock the CPUs a lot but if you are building for the first time, its better to stay safe and get a phenom II x6, it performs better than the 6100 unless you over clock the 6100 to 4.2GHz.

With the APU and GPU compatibility. You can use both but only one at the same time unless you use a hybrid crossfire setup.

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Bulldozer wasn't the best release for gaming, you can over clock the CPUs a lot but if you are building for the first time, its better to stay safe and get a phenom II x6, it performs better than the 6100 unless you over clock the 6100 to 4.2GHz.

With the APU and GPU compatibility. You can use both but only one at the same time unless you use a hybrid crossfire setup.

Ok so I took a look at the prices again, and here is how I see it.

AMD A8-5600k 4 cores @ 3.6GHz $103

AMD FX-6100 6 cores @ 3.3GHz $117

AMD Phenom II X6 1045T 6 cores @ 2.7GHz $99

You claim that the Phenom is better, yet it has lower GHz... I am aware that this is not the end all be though so what makes it better? reliability? I want it to be better, it's cheaper haha! But seriously, out of these three CPU's, which one is the best? is the FX worth the extra money?

EDIT:It looks like the Phenom is the best. coupled with a 7770 GHz GPU and 770iCafe Mobo, the price goes down to $600.88 before rebates and after shipping! (http://pcpartpicker.com/p/H0WH) if the 770iCafe is solid, than this build may be perfect.

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